Liam Fox has distanced himself from Afghan Heroes citing a “breakdown in trust” after the charity failed to inform him that it was being investigated by the Charity Commission.

The Conservative MP, who is a former Defence Secretary, had been a patron of the Somerset-based charity, into which the Commission recently opened a statutory inquiry.

Fox was also involved in launching a programme in partnership with the charity in 2012, Give Us Time, which encouraged people to donate time at their holiday homes to service personnel, and promised to write to fellow MPs to drum up support.

In a statement Fox said: “I hugely admire the principal ethos behind the charity, which aims to help service personnel damaged by deployment in combat. It is important to stress at this stage that this is an investigation and no conclusions about the running of the charity have been reached.

“However, I was not made aware by either the management or the trustees of the charity that any investigation was due to take place. With this breakdown in trust it is impossible for me to continue to act as patron and it is with great sadness that I can no longer do so.”

For the financial year ending December 2012 Afghan Heroes had an income of £548,440 and spent £516,288. It spent just £15,200 of this on “charitable activities”, with £241,000 and £233,900 going towards “generating voluntary income” and “trading to raise funds” respectively.

In 2011 a charity founded by Fox and run by his friend Adam Werrity was shut down and removed from the register of charities by the Charity Commission after an investigation into Atlantic Bridge concluded that the “educational objects of the charity have not been advanced”.